It wasn’t a close race.
Two Peninsula runners helped bring the girls relay team to Team B.C. victory Aug. 9 at the Western Canada Summer Games in Kamloops, with a healthy 30-metre lead over second-place finishers Athletics Alberta.
They also beat the record for the 4 x 400 relay by five seconds.
The team started off in first with local athlete Danielle Delage, but one of the Alberta runners soon caught up with her. Delage passed the baton to fellow Peninsula runner Casey Atkin, who kept up with her competitor.
“I caught her neck-and-neck, I was just fighting for it,”Atkin said. The third runner, Devan Wiebe from Vancouver ramped it up and jumped 15 metres ahead.
The final runner, Katie Reid, “killed it on the last one,”said Atkin, and finished the relay almost 30 metres ahead of the Alberta team.
The girls beat the 2007 record of 3.46.30 by five seconds, clocking in with a time of 3.41.41.
Atkin said all four runners had the same mentality.
“We were all like: this is our last race of the season, let’s go out with a huge bang.”
Delage agreed. “We just gave it our all,” she said. She caught the flu Aug. 4, the travel day to Kamloops, but pulled herself together for the Tuesday race.
Atkin said she had raced against Reid and Wiebe previously, but had never run with them before.
“To be all on the same team, running the relay, was powerful.”
She also beat her personal best by one second with a split time of 54.1 seconds.
Both girls are rookie Team B.C. athletes.
“It’s really to weird to feel that the season’s over, we accomplished so much,” said Atkin.
She spoke of making their veteran coach, Ron Parker, proud. Parker was attending his last Western Canada games as a coach.
Atkin is on a high. Although she’s taking three weeks off, she said she’s really excited for next season to start in September. She hopes to qualify for World Junior Track and Field championships in Barcelona next July.
“It’s been hard to wipe the smile off my face.”